Technology based on thermal processing today has advanced well beyond the campfire. Earlier technologies for the processing of waste liquids have been distillation, reverse osmosis, micro filtration, chemical filtration, electro-coagulation, etc. These processes work to varying degrees—some better than others. Still difficult to process are combinations of chemicals, minerals, bacteria, and heavy metals including both organic and inorganic compounds—these combinations do not allow just a single process to purify and restore the water back to a usable commodity. Modern industry requires a modern solution. Most membrane processors and clarifying processes have major quantities of polluted materials that are now a concentrated and a larger liability after processing. Many processes treat the suspended solid but not the dissolved solids. Membranes are easily destroyed by volatile organic compounds. In other words, today's effluents demand a solution that is efficient, safe, and viable to effectively deal with the complex problems created by industry today.
What the problem requires is an enhanced structure and method for reacting the targeted condition and creating a series of separations and thermal reconstructions of the targeted effluent that in turn create a series of products from the effluents and the residual waste.
Thermal processors utilize heat for executing a desired chemical or physical change to a substance or to things. A furnace is a type of thermal processor that produces heat, such as by combustion of a fuel or by application of electrical energy, for application to a thing, a space, or a substance. Other types of thermal processors receive heat energy from an external source and condition, augment, and/or direct the heat in a desired manner.
A well-known example of a thermal processor is a residential furnace that produces hot air or hot water for heating buildings. Another type of thermal processor applies heat for melting or shaping a material such as a metal for a desired purpose. Yet another type of thermal processor is used for heat-treating objects or materials (e.g., metals, glasses, and ceramics) for annealing purposes or to change a physical characteristic of the objects or materials. Yet another type of thermal processor is used for incinerating or otherwise converting waste material in a manner that reduces the volume of the waste, converts the waste to a less noxious and/or more useful material, and/or forms from the waste a more easily handled material.
Another type of conventional thermal processor is generally termed an “evaporator,” which receives a target material (which can be a solid or liquid) and applies heat to the target material for converting at least a portion of the target material into a gas or vapor that can be used for another purpose or safely disposed. Evaporators have many uses, including separating a liquid from solids or from other substances present in the liquid, separating one type of liquid from a mixture containing at least one other type of liquid, or separating a liquid from a gas. For example, an evaporator used for separating a liquid from suspended solids in the liquid typically includes a heat source that heats the mixture to a temperature allowing separation of the liquid (e.g., by forming a vapor from the liquid and condensing the vapor) from the solids.
A substantial operational challenge associated with many conventional evaporators is dealing with the sludges and other substantially solid materials (usually waste materials) left behind from the evaporation. For example, a key problem with sludges and cakes is their tendency to accumulate in locations (such as on heated surfaces) in a manner that substantially reduces the efficiency or efficacy of the evaporator.
Hence, an evaporator or other thermal processor that could be placed at a well site and used for reclaiming well by-products in an efficient manner for useful purposes would be advantageous.
Further, with respect to oil wells and other extraction sites of fossil fuels (including coal deposits), many of these sites contain substantial amounts of gaseous methane and other low-molecular-weight hydrocarbons as byproducts of extraction of the target material from the sites. The sites are usually poorly equipped to recover these gaseous byproducts, which almost always require treatment to make the byproducts commercially usable. Since the gaseous byproducts are usually combustible, if not recovered they are simply flared off or otherwise discharged into the atmosphere without any effort being made to recover useful energy from them. Hence, for these and other situations, there is a need for thermal processing apparatus that would allow for recovery and conversion of these gases and other reactive gases into a source of heat for on-site processing.